


Meanwhile the World Goes On

by tealmoon



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, Alternate Universe - Underswap, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Soul Touching, almost entirely fluff, honeymustard - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7034065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tealmoon/pseuds/tealmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two of them try something new, and it's better and stranger than they could have ever expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meanwhile the World Goes On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [0neType](https://archiveofourown.org/users/0neType/gifts).



He fully expected Red to crawl into his own disheveled bed when they finally got home from dinner at the café—it had been a decently busy Tuesday (by their low standards, if not for most people), and he had that keyed-up look that usually meant he was soon to collapse into uneasy sleep. He had been irritable and stuttering all day, and he had barely eaten, so there was obviously something going on in that skull of his, and Papyrus wasn’t privy to it. But instead, as Papyrus sprawled on top of his sheets, flicking his sandals off with blue magic rather than physically moving, Red stood in the doorway, watching him nervously.

(After living with him for so long, Papyrus and Blue knew every square on his anxiety bingo card, and so far he was moving towards a proper bingo: sweating, magic flaring in his eye socket, fiddling with his jacket…)

“What’s up?” Papyrus lifted his head just enough so his pillow wouldn’t smother his voice, otherwise unmoving and still spread-eagle. With a little sigh, Red kicked his sneakers off and crossed the room to climb onto the bed. There wasn’t much room with Papyrus’s gangly limbs stretched out, so Red crawled up between his legs, lying face down on Papyrus’s torso.

“Aw. You wanna sleep here tonight?” Even having his own bed, sometimes he still shared with Papyrus, after he had a particularly rough panic attack or claimed that it was too cold to sleep alone. Papyrus slept like a statue so Red’s flailing didn’t bother him like it did Blue, who could wake up if a pin dropped in the Capital.

Red pressed his face against Papyrus’s hoodie and mumbled something, so quiet that he couldn’t hear, even from that close.

He ran a hand over Red’s skull and topmost vertebrae lightly. “Wanna run that by me again?”

Red lifted his head up, blushing furiously. “I said, I want to t-touch souls with you.”

In the moment that it took for Papyrus to restart his mind and process that, Red’s expression darkened, taking his silence and confusion as a rejection. He started to push himself up on his elbows, squirming away to the foot of the bed.

Papyrus winced, sitting up and wrapping his arms around Red. Not tight enough to restrain or trap him, mostly just to get his attention. “Hey, slow down. I didn’t say no, but… what brought this up?”

“I thought you were hinting at it! You gave me that book, what else was I supposed to think?” Again, his mind blanked out, but he soon realized, staring over at his bookshelf. Red was starting to amass his own book collection, but Papyrus and Blue were both still lending him theirs, especially now that Red had picked up a few sentry shifts of his own and needed something to entertain himself during the long stretches of silence and boredom. He seemed fine with any genre, and he had worked his way down to the lowest shelves on Papyrus’s bookshelf, to the romance novels. Papyrus had a fair amount of water-stained human romances that he picked up because the covers were absurd or they had tantalizing descriptions of the surface, but most of it was Mettablook’s work, written for monster audiences.

He couldn’t remember what book he had handed to Red yesterday, but he could imagine what Red had found in it and had interpreted as some secret romantic message. He only gave himself a moment to imagine Red hunched down on his chair, clutching the book with shivering hands, completely red-faced as he read about two monsters passionately touching souls….

 _He needed to focus._ “I wasn’t trying to tell you something in code, it was just a book. But if you want to try, then I do too.”

With a huff, Red finally returned his embrace. “Nobody does that shit back home. What if someone ambushes you in the middle of it? What if it was a long-con and the other person was faking it to get a shot at your soul?”

Papyrus winced, tilting Red’s skull up so he was looking at him. “Y’know, I’d never do that to you, and no one’s going to break into the house or anything to attack us. You’re safe here, whether we do it or not.” As Red’s stay in their universe stretched into months, he needed fewer and fewer reassurances of his safety, but Papyrus felt compelled to keep reminding him.

At the beginning, he hadn’t believed any of it, but now he merely grinned up at Papyrus, still a little anxious, but feeling happy and safe. “I know you won’t, and I still want to do it.” He leaned up and clicked his sharpened teeth against Papyrus’s cheekbone.

Red sat back on his heels and pulled off his heavy jacket, giving Papyrus room to yank off his hoodie and drop it on the floor. “How do you wanna do this? The book had them trading souls…” Red trailed off, blushing again, and Papyrus tried not to think of all the other things he must have been reading in those novels.

“Never done this before either. We could do that, or I could just touch yours?” Awkwardness was starting to set in, and he felt like he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Nah,” Red breathed, leaning in and smirking. “I don’t wanna be lazy right now. I want to touch your soul even more than I want your hands on mine.”

He could feel orange heat rising on his cheekbones, not nearly as bright as Red’s absurd blushes, but enough that he snickered at Papyrus a bit. Papyrus reached down and pulled off his tank top as well, light already shining through the fabric. Although there wasn’t anything particularly scandalous about his rib cage (it was just bones after all) and Red had seen him shirtless dozens of times, he couldn’t help but feel weird under his gaze.

He reached up into his ribs to where his soul was floating and pulled it out carefully. Moving it always felt weird initially, but he held it out to Red after a minute. He took it with both hands, and Papyrus could feel him shaking through his soul. It could pick up on temperature and pressure just as well as his bones; no one would bother with soul-touching if you couldn’t feel anything through it.

Red brought it up to his face, mouth slack and pupils wide, as reverent as Papyrus had ever seen him. It spilled amber light across his skull as he very lightly kissed the surface of it, taking care not to scratch it with his fangs. Papyrus swallowed a dozen comments about how beautiful Red looked in that light.

Still holding Papyrus’s soul in one hand, Red reached under the hem of his shirt to retrieve his own soul. (From the visible chips and cracks Papyrus had seen on his forearms and clavicle, his ribs were probably even more scarred. No wonder he wanted to stay covered up.) Papyrus couldn’t help but wince at how tightly he was gripping it, when he treated Papyrus’s with such care.

With it passed over safely, Red flopped against him, rubbing his thumb over his soul. Papyrus didn’t have a good reference for how it was supposed to feel, but it was like each movement sent warm ripples through his body, easing bones that had been aching for so long that he didn’t notice it anymore. Outside of impersonal healings, no one had ever touched his soul before, and all the novels and romantic advice in the Underground, though helpful, couldn’t compare. Red gave a breathless laugh and kissed it again, and it felt like how Papyrus imagined sunlight would be.

His hands were big enough to hold Red’s soul in one, so he looped his other arm around Red, pressing him to his chest. Red’s soul fit him perfectly: small, bright as a ruby, with darker maroon lines running through it as if it was a broken piece of porcelain that had been glued back together. Before Red, he had never even thought that souls could survive something that would leave scars.

He ran his thumb across one of the lines, and Red let out a shaky breath. Immediately his hands stilled. “Shit, did that hurt?”

Red shook his head. “Stop freaking out, you barely touched it. I’m not used to it, that’s all.” Tentatively, Papyrus started again, rubbing along the length of one of the longest scars, which ran down the center, dividing it in half. Red sighed, his head falling back against Papyrus’s sternum, anxiety clearly gone.

Papyrus had a sense of a window opening in his head, but he knew enough not to be startled at it: prolonged soul contact between monsters led to a temporary mental link that lasted as long as they were still touching souls. It was hard to distinguish Red’s emotions from his own when they were echoes of the same affection and contentment.

The spike of confusion was obviously Red’s, once he registered their magic blending together. “What the hell?” he whispered, though Papyrus couldn’t feel any stress coming from him.

“When people touch souls, sometimes they start sharing emotions and memories. I’m okay with it, but we can stop if you don’t like it.” He couldn’t help but whisper as well, feeling like the moment was fragile.

“No, keep going. We can really show each other stuff?”

Papyrus started pressing more firmly on his soul, bolder now that he could immediately feel Red enjoying it, rather than finding it uncomfortable or painful. “Yeah, show me whatever you want.” Papyrus could see brief flickers in his mind’s eye, as Red considered and discarded potential memories, a hint of frustration filtering through.

The blur came to a halt and he saw Snowdin, though it wasn’t the Snowdin he knew. He had a quick glimpse of buildings with their windows darkened or boarded up, as the Red in the memory trudged through town. He watched through Red’s eyes as he walked home, a grocery bag looped around one wrist.

It seemed bleak and lonely—where were the townspeople?—but the memory gave off excitement and pride, as Red finally reached home. Papyrus only saw a brief glimpse of a tall skeleton as he walked in, before Red abruptly blanked out the memory in a rush of panic.

“That was s-stupid, why did I show you _that_? I’m sorry, I’m sorry—" He had been draped over Papyrus before, completely relaxed, but he shot up and start to lean away.

“Red, it’s okay!” Papyrus kept rubbing at his soul and trying to project calm feelings, hoping it would help, beckoning him back with his other hand. “Was that your brother?”

“Yeah, and I know, you hate him, I shouldn’t have shown you…”

“I said you could show me whatever you want. You can keep going, I won’t get pissed off.”

Slowly, Red started to shift back towards him. “I wanted to show you something happy, and that was the first thing that came to mind.” The memory started to piece itself back together in Papyrus’s head. “He got into the Royal Guard, and we had a little party, just us. Got totally shit-faced…”

The skeleton in the memory was a sharp-edged, scarred version of himself, the kind of person that Papyrus could imagine hurting Red, but for this memory, they were both happy. The smile didn’t quite fit his face at first, but it became more natural (though the drinking probably helped). He watched Red congratulate his brother, and though their conversation and brief embrace seemed awkward and shy in comparison to how affectionate Papyrus and Blue got, there was clearly love there.

It faded out after a few minutes, and Red sighed. “Was that too weird? Show me something instead—show me Blue, if you want.”

He thought about it for a minute, rubbing circles against Red’s soul before he finally picked a memory: the three of them a few months ago, on New Year’s Eve, all three of them tipsy and Blue’s excitement seeping into the two of them. He made sure Red could feel how much Papyrus loved them both, how much he had wanted to kiss Red at midnight as Blue shouted along with the countdown on TV but had settled for draping an arm around him. Next year, he was definitely going for that kiss, and the thought of there being a _next year_ made his soul flutter.

Red’s movements were starting to slow down, his fingers still against Papyrus’s soul. Sleepiness seeped into his happy daze, as the memory drifted to an end. He mumbled something that sounded like ‘thank you’. Quickly, before he could pass out, he gave Red’s soul one last stroke and handed it back for him to replace in his rib cage. Papyrus shifted himself so he was laying with Red against his ribs and pulled the blankets up around them. The connection ended as Red fell asleep, hands going slack around Papyrus’s soul.

Papyrus smiled and kissed the top of his head before taking his own soul and setting it back where it belonged. He drifted off in the fading glow from their chests, and there weren't any nightmares, that night.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ocean ch. 2 has been really hard to write for some reason, so I took a break for this instead. Plus I thought it was silly that I haven't written a proper honeymustard thing, because what is fanfic for if not for writing about your ships? (Note: I know 'soul sex' is a thing, but I am super ace and prefer to write it as very intimate but not particularly sexy.) 
> 
> Ahhh, this is really embarassing, actually, I'm not used to writing shippy stuff.
> 
> The title comes from Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, which is a lovely poem that I recommend.


End file.
